Pre-departure ramblings

Last year, as I tried to decide whether I wanted to stay in London or if I should go and see the world, whether I wanted to stay close to my family and friends in the most amazing city I’ve ever been, or if I should follow my self-fabricated destiny, when I still thought the choice was mine and not a matter of welcoming what came my way, I wrote:

Voglio vedere il lago Titicaca, scoprire come vivono gli Inca nelle Ande, voglio ballare al suono della musica Senegalese, esplorare la foresta tropicale del Rwanda? O voglio sentire nostalgia della Costa Rica ogni giornata di sole di profumo di mango, voglio scacciare il mal d’Africa ogni volta che vedo una foto di una strada polverosa di vita reale?

[Which roughly translates to “Do I want to see lake Titicaca, discover how the Incas live in the Andes, do I want to dance to the sound of Senegalese music, explore Rwanda’s tropical forest? Or do I want to miss Costa Rica every sunny mango perfumed day, do I want to send away my Africa-sickness every time I see a picture of a dusty road of real life?"]

I guess somewhat I already knew.

I am moving again, to another unknown and yet partly predictable place. At the end of January I’ll arrive in Peru—after stopping in London and D.C./Virginia to visit my brothers—and I’ll spend a year there. I’ll be working for Paititi, a small development project stemmed out of a travel company; it is just starting up and will become an NGO in February. I’ll be the volunteer coordinator—I’ll let you know what exactly that means when I find out. I’m going to try to recruit volunteers from different countries to come and work in rural communities around the city of Cusco (in the mountains) and Pilcopata, the village at the entrance of Manu National Park, supposedly one of the areas with the greatest biodiversity in the world.

This is the website of the organisation I’ll work for if you want to check it out. My moment of glory is my misspelled name on the homepage, otherwise the Volunteering section talks more about what I’ll be doing.

According to the Inca tradition, in the 12th century the Sun god asked his son Manco Capac, the first Inca, to find the navel of the world: the spot where he’d be able to sink the golden stick his father had given him all the way into the ground as a sign of fertility. When Manco Capac finally discovered this place he founded the city of Cusco: Qosq’o in the indigenous Quechua language means “navel”. The title of my blog ‘L’Ombelico del Mondo’ means ‘The Navel of the World’ in Italian. It's also the title of a song by Jovanotti, and I couldn't resist the temptation to post it here...enjoy!

I’m going to write in English for all the obvious reasons, and you will hopefully forgive my occasional digressions in Italian/Spanish, as a few of the people I would most want to read this won’t be able to understand it.

I watched Pocahontas a few days ago, and John Smith says something along the lines of “I’ve seen so many new worlds, what could possibly be different about this one?”; through this blog I’ll try to tell you what is new about this one, by showing you what I see, and introducing you to the people I meet.
I hope I made the right decision to go, I hope the people and places I’ll get to know and everything I will learn, discover and see will make up for everyone and everything I will miss. And I hope you’ll come and visit me.